Freya North - Polly

‘All set?’ Kate asked.

‘Do you know,’ Polly replied, ‘I think I’ll give it a miss. Jet lag, you see. And building a house tomorrow – have to be strong, hey!’

‘Well,’ cautioned Kate, ‘I don’t think you can give it a miss. You’re on duty, Polly. That’s your job. That’s what you’re paid for. That’s why you’re here.’

Kate didn’t tell her that it wouldn’t be a problem for another teacher to stand in. She didn’t tell her because she didn’t want Polly not to go. She thought Polly ought not to be alone. Not on her first Saturday night in America. She hardly knew the girl, not properly. But she knew her well enough to see that loneliness was uncharted anathema to Polly Fenton. Kate cared.

So Miss Fenton went through the motions of being a teacher that night. She knew the film well, having seen it many times at university, and knew what to heckle and when to sing. But though she did so at all the opportune moments, gaining much admiration from the students in the process, there was no passion behind it and she felt no fun. She could have talked to Lorna, really she could. Really talked. She’d have liked that; Lorna too, hopefully. But she couldn’t because it was so noisy. And she was on duty.

What is it, Polly? What, exactly, has unnerved you so?

It feels too far to be safe.

How do you mean?

It’s new. I’ve never not been near him. We’ve rarely done things apart. ‘While the cat’s away’, hey?

How about ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’, surely?

More like ‘out of sight, out of mind’. I must be losing mine. I don’t know, do you know I just feel – uneasy. All of a sudden. I suppose I just presumed all to be so secure. After five years, you slip into an easy routine. Or is it complacency? I’m not going to say ‘yes’. I’d better not. Not for a while.

Power game?

Safety net.

Fighting sleep, Polly forced images of Max to assault her instead. Max drunk. Max stoned. Max having a brilliant time without her. Max necking someone, tall and blonde. Max’s mind being utterly devoid of Polly.

She’d never done this to herself before.

She’d never seen Max like that.

What are you doing, Fenton? That’s not Max – not Max at all.

Look what Sunday has brought – a breathtakingly beautiful morning. Polly slept well, eventually, and her fears that smiling would elude her entire stay have proven unfounded: she grins broadly at the morning. Dew covers the lawn in a sweeping kiss and the very tips of just one or two leaves on each maple tree wink a crimson preview to Polly. New England. Vermont. Fall. How lucky.

Trading Old for New.

‘Just you wait,’ says Kate, pushing a mug of erbal tea (most definitely no ‘h’) into Polly’s hands, ‘another four weeks and man, you’ll weep!’ They sip and sigh awhile.

‘All set?’ Kate asks.

‘Won’t I need a hammer?’ asks Polly. Kate laughs and gives her a quick, spontaneous hug.

‘Nope!’ she declares, ‘that’s for the guys. You know there won’t be one nail or screw used, just oak pegs?’

How could Polly know? She’s never been to a house raising before.

Can a scent be deafening? Technically, probably not; grammatically, debatable too. However, it occurs to Polly, as she and Kate stride towards the site, that it is the most appropriate word to use.

The scent of pine is deafening.

Definitely; it is deafening and divine.

The pine, not yet seen, has been felled, planed and is ready to be made into a house.

From the right-hand fork at the end of Main Street, a small, well-maintained lane leads off it to the right. It continues severely up hill; over the petticoats and on to the very skirt of Mount Hubbardtons. Not that John Hubbardton was a cross-dresser, of course; it’s merely the price he must pay for having a mountain previously known as Sister Mountain renamed in his honour. After half a mile, a dirt track leads off the lane and it is here that we catch up with Polly and Kate. Kate is telling her all about Jojo Baxter but Polly can hardly hear her for the scent of pine. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply. It’s so heady. She stumbles as she goes. Kate links arms with her. For support.

‘Are these my Queens of Tarts?’

‘Hey Jojo!’ Kate sang, loading all the tarts on to Polly’s already laden arms so she could embrace Jojo. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Good, good. You must be Polly? Hi there, I’m Jojo. I’m starving and we’ve hardly gotten started. Save my soul and send me to heaven: blueberry, cherry and apple? Queens of Tarts, queens!’

Polly fell for Jojo immediately and knew instinctively that they’d see eye to eye – not least because they were absolutely the same height.

There were people and pine everywhere. By the time Polly had laid the pies on one of three trestles set up in a rambling shack on the edge of the clearing, the population on Jojo’s site seemed to have doubled. What a crowd! Adults and children and most ages represented therein. The site for the house had already been prepared in the form of a large, rectangular platform; children were scampering over it; women were pacing it, imagining the kitchen and my! what an awesome bedroom; men were analysing it with tape measures, spirit levels and the failsafe eye. There were three enormous wooden ‘A’ frames; one lay on the platform, the other two at either end. Nearby, stacks of pine in differing configurations were planked up in neat piles six foot high. A single sheet of white paper, tacked to one plank, had a list of ten, polite points. This was how you raised a house. As easy as apple pie.

This is America , thought Polly, venturing nearer to the platform and absorbing all surrounding her as she went, not just the pine and the fact that folk build houses for their friends in a day. No; alongside the pies and pumpernickel, the accents and the stunning scenery, this enormous sense of spirit embodies America, surely .

Wasn’t all of this a film? Harrison Ford?

The house raising might well have been staged just for an English tourist. But just as Polly was neither ignored or stared at, nor was she over-welcomed. She felt at ease. She was not a tourist, she was not at the cinema. People allowed her to occupy a space amongst them. She fitted in just fine.

All America is here: wholesome kids, caring women, buddy-buddy men, Boston beans baking deep in that pit over there, the children’s tree house with the Stars and Stripes. I hear terminology I wrongly thought would irritate me, I smell the gargantuan feast that will revive the pioneers mid-morning. I baked a pie. I smell pine. I’m part of this. I belong.

The first ‘A’ frame was aligned, hauled and coaxed into its place with little ado.

‘Hold it right there, Ed.’

‘Easy! Easy!’

‘Up she goes. She’s up.’

‘Way to go, guys!’

While the children now played in the trees and by the stream, the women chatted and marvelled and ensured that beakers were overflowing with fruit juice. The builders were all voluntary – Clinton and Jackson and a couple of other Hubbardton teachers amongst them. There were also Jojo’s friends and family who had travelled across the state, some even down from Canada, to be a part of the day. There were Jude and Ed, her hillbilly-looking nephews whose sensitive and polite demeanour was utterly at odds with their thick necks and thatched hair, their calloused, stout hands and seam-stretching thighs. Nearby, a couple of elderly men in great shape (who actually didn’t look silly in their checked shirts and worn jeans), spoke about e-mail and software while they flung ropes about like dab hands. A goofy teenager set up a plumb-line and cried ‘Yo!’ triumphantly while Clinton and Jackson rigged up a ‘come-along’ to secure the correct tautness between struts. A small army of men wore tool belts slung like holsters; whipping out hammers with a speed that would have done John Wayne proud, or twirling their tools with all the flair of a rock-and-roll drummer. Everyone had a job to do, everyone knew their place. Overseeing the entire operation was a small, wiry man, the architect and only paid member of the team, bearded strangely minus a moustache, who darted nimbly around the growing skeleton, heaping praise, advice and instructions with a softly spoken voice. All three ‘A’ frames were now in place and point four on the list had been reached.